


Beacons

by hyrude



Category: Black Mirror, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Canon-Typical Drug Use, F/F, First Meetings, First Time, Happy Ending, Internalized Homophobia, Lesbian Dennis, Lesbian Mac, San Junipero, Slurs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-15
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-11-01 00:02:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10910166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyrude/pseuds/hyrude
Summary: "When I'm in there, that's the thrill. It's not me sleeping around, carrying the party on my back, inventing and reinventing a good time, right? It's the concept of the 80s.” The gestures that accompany it are emphatic, as if her words actually mean something. “I'm not me when I'm in there. I don't want to be."Mac’s unimpressed, but she hangs on every word despite herself. There’s a fallacy somewhere in that logic. "Who are you when you're out here, then?"She considers the question as she sucks the light from her cig. "With you?" An exhale, a smile. "Denise."--In a busy Pennsylvania town in 1984, an outgoing party girl and a badass strike up a powerful bond that seems to defy the laws of time and space.Lesbian Macdennis San Junipero AU. Written for the MacDennis Spring Fic Exchange 2017.





	Beacons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beachdeath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beachdeath/gifts).



There's no reason for Mac to be drawn here the way she is; the 80s were a tacky, ugly time with bad music and a drug market she couldn’t keep up with, and this club's like a caricature drawn by someone hopped up on the same amphetamines she never managed to cut a profit on back in the day.

She's wearing a mesh tank top, armpits cut low enough to show full sideboob if not for the period-inaccurate bandeau she threw on last second. It’s dark and anonymous in a roundabout way, sure, but this isn’t a costume party. There’s something sacrilegious about treating San Junipero like a slutty Halloween rager. For most everyone here, it’s real life. It’s the afterlife.

Even so, it feels temporary. People, _dead people_ , jostle her as their bodies jerk to the pulsing beat like marionettes tugged by an amateur puppeteer, and loose ankles let her unfamiliar body sway with the motions, dreamlike. There’s an empty glass in her hand. She can’t remember if her beer’s gone because she drank it or if it joined the sticky mass of spilled drinks lining the floor when she wasn’t paying attention.

The crowd hushes with a hissed _“shhhh!”_ as the lights dim even more and a mic crackles to life onstage. The anticipatory silence that falls feels unprecedented; if not for this moment, Mac would’ve thought the club maintained a constant roar of shrill cheering and fake basslines for all of eternity with no discernible beginning or ending.

“Prepare to experience,” comes a husky whisper over the loudspeakers. One vinyl platform boot extends out from behind a curtain and thunks on the first step leading up to the stage. A huddle of men nearby break the fragile silence with whoops that almost make her miss the announcer’s following promise of, _“sexual magic_.”

Jesus Christ. She should go. She hates this shit. The only reason she’s lingered this long is because all the electronica has fried her brain cells.  

The announcer drags herself the rest of the way up by mile-long metallic gold-clad legs and takes her place behind the stage mic with intoxicating confidence. Her painted lips part around her teeth like she’s baring them in warning, only to let loose a haughty laugh. She flips long, teased hair held away from her face only by a bandana over one ridiculous shoulderpad and grips the microphone like she’s planning to give it an old-fashioned.

Maybe she’ll stay for one more song.

The performance is a trainwreck skillwise, near as she can tell with the ringing in her ears, but the way that woman grinds against the mic stand and eyefucks the crowd commands the room into resigned appreciation. At one point, the performer’s false eyelashes flutter, and Mac swears she’s looking directly at her. Her chest burns the same way her cheeks do, insides twisting.

She fumbles through the crowd to return to the bar and requests another couple drinks, this time careful to make sure they end up in her mouth.

“The set’s a mess, right?” the barkeep leans forward to ask. He’s real, she’s pretty sure, but there’s no way to tell if he’s real in the way all the dead people are, or if he’s real like the club is real. If he’s a program, he’s very good.

He passes her a shot she didn’t order and she downs it without question. There’s no tab for dead people, she assumes. The alcohol does nothing to dampen the ache threatening to split her skull.

“No kidding,” she agrees around a wince. “This happen a lot, the mullet chick mainstaging? People seem to know her. And like her, even.”

“Electric Dream Machine’s her stage name, and you’d be surprised. I don’t think anyone’s deluding themselves into thinking she’s good. They’re only acting like it because ‘a that body--”

“And those thighs,” Mac agrees with a nod.

The barkeep’s nonplussed expression goes unnoticed. “Besides, word is, she always puts out. Different person every night. Guys hang on her constantly, but she picks her target out of the crowd, I guess. Likes the hunt.” She hums in response, sympathetic. She’d like the hunt too, she reckons, if all the men here weren’t so underwhelming. Risking another glance up at the stage confirms that the Electric Dream Machine is still producing the same hot pit of guilt in the place Mac used to get period cramps. She clings to the sensation and forces herself to down another shot.

Mercifully, the set ends, and Mac can track the performer’s progress down the stairs and back behind the curtain by the slap of thick soles against hardwood until the applause drowns out her steps. She stares down at the empty shot glass, rose pink with a section cut out of the glass for tacky moving sparkle gel, and sucks on a thin lime wedge as an afterthought. Electric Dream Machine’s probably moving through the crowd now, choosing her lucky victim. Mac’s brows knit together, unbidden guilt pit intensifying. She must be empathizing for all the sin that girl’s chalking up with her nightly indulgences.

There’s a hand between her shoulderblades, then, and it glides down her spine until settling in the small of her back as someone leans into her. Mac’s body alights at the contact.

“You here alone?” comes a man’s tipsy voice, and she feels herself move without giving the order.

The hand slips off smoothly as she slides from her stool, and suddenly she’s sure she’ll suffocate if she doesn’t find the escape. An exit sign glares red and harsh, a beacon, and she follows it blindly until she bursts out into the alley and can gasp in deep breaths of air that tastes far too clean to belong to a real big city.

She lands ass first on a bench, heart threatening to burst, and only just calms her breathing from an open-mouthed pant to a close-mouthed one when the exit door swings open again. Music swells and colored lights trickle along the entryway like lazy fluorescents reflecting on the floor of an aquarium for the moment before the metal latch clangs and Mac’s plunged back into near-silence, near-darkness once more, now with a stranger.

The streetlight at the corner casts the alley in partial shadow, but Mac doesn’t need stage lights to recognize the thud of vinyl platforms.  
  
The woman has to glare down at the seat and calculate the best trajectory for sitting down without teetering on those sky-high heels, but manages with practiced grace. Mac watches her flip the long auburn hair over her shoulder, painted lips pursed in a simper. Just when she thinks to commend the woman for her commitment to the era, she digs both thumbs above either temple and pulls back, taking the volumes of hair and a mesh wig skeleton with her. Mac shuts her mouth again with a click, urgently studying the transformation out of the corner of her eye.  
  
The performer’s curly hair is cropped short, an inch shy of a bob, an inch too long for a pixie cut. Without the wig, she looks like a middle schooler who got fairy makeup done for the dress rehearsal of a musical: overdramatic and hard to look at directly. Love ballads distort into bass and drum through the thick club walls; the music eeking out can be felt more than heard in the steady thrum beneath the soles of their shoes.  
  
"You're awfully committed to the whole look, huh? I’m not really into that glam rock fem shit, so much, but you really went all out," Mac breaks first, overwhelmed with curiosity. Her lack of tact never fails to outweigh any intimidation. "You know you can make your hair look like that for real, here. Even if it's not realistic. I dunno why you'd waste your time dealing with a wig, especially with how hot it is in there."  
  
"It's about authenticity," she insists, finally catching a light for her cigarette. She allows herself a drag before finishing the thought. "The fun is in playing the role. Nobody ever actually had hair like this in the real 80s.” She shakes her wig for emphasis. “You think Bowie went from 84 hair to 85 in a year authentically? The realism's in the fake." Exhales on a sigh, smoke hovers between them. Mac imagines it as another beacon. Some part of her longs to follow it.

She’s not too entranced not to smell bullshit, though. “Uh, okay. Whatever,” she gripes, pulling a face. "So you're not reliving memories, then, like everybody else is. You're inventing a new person altogether."  
  
She sighs for what could be the third or thousandth time, picture of put-upon. Wigless and with a cigarette, she looks much more like the 80s Mac remembers. "When I'm in there, that's the thrill. It's not _me_ sleeping around, carrying the party on my back, inventing and reinventing a good time, right? It's the concept of the 80s.” The gestures that accompany it are emphatic, as if her words actually mean something. “I'm not me when I'm in there. I don't want to be."  
  
Mac’s unimpressed, but she hangs on every word despite herself. There’s a fallacy somewhere in that logic. "Who are you when you're out here, then?"  
  
She smirks, then works to look like she's not, apparently amused at being caught. She considers the question as she sucks the light from her cig. "With you?" An exhale, a smile. "Denise."  
  
Unannounced, midnight disrupts the illusion with the dissolution of a dream coming undone. Mac wakes up alone, cramping, cramping, cramping.

  


* * *

  


When they meet again, it’s the same year on the same bench in the same alley outside the same club. This time Mac’s wearing an open denim vest, but with the same low armpits and bandeau, attention to detail bordering on superstitious. Denise was a phenomenon, an enigma, so any single change to the circumstances could keep her from appearing, as far as Mac knows. Summoning ethereal entities comes down to the letter, she thinks momentarily, before realizing her mistake and severing any analogical ties between Denise and witchcraft from her mind.

It’s raining this time, but an awning strategically placed over the bench keeps her mostly dry as she waits. A hush interrupts the constant beat of pop music. Mac tenses. Inside, someone starts up a warbling power ballad, and Mac knows she has a half hour to prepare. It’s all of five minutes before the clang of the metal door turns her head.

Denise’s shoes are less outrageous this time and tonight’s wig sports purple ringlets, but she’s already taken both off to hold in either hand. Through the doorway, Mac can see a man and two women crowding her for attention, but presses her accessories into their hands and shoos them back inside with a word Mac can’t hear.

“You’re done already?” Mac asks when the door swings shut behind them, voice raised to be heard over the downpour.

Denise startles. “Shit!” she swears. “I didn’t see you.” Her socks are soaked through by the time she makes it over to huddle under Mac’s awning, but she doesn’t seem to mind. Somehow, this is the first red flag for Mac.

“Dude, how the hell can you walk around with wet socks? That’s, like, the universal human experience of despair,” she asks as Denise settles down far closer to her than the size of the bench requires.

She answers simply, “I’m a sociopath,” and fishes out a cigarette.

Mac manages to throw her an uninspired look despite their touching thighs reducing her thoughts to sub-three syllable words. “Wow, okay.”

Denise returns it with a grin. “I cut the set short because I didn’t see you in the crowd.”

“You--?”

“Once I have my sights set on someone, it’s hard to be satisfied with anyone else,” Denise interrupts, and places a hand delicately over Mac’s knee. “Not worth it to do things for attention when there’s no one whose attention is worth grabbing.”

Mac malfunctions. “N-- I thought you were after men! The barkeep said-- And all the guys in the club are after you. You don’t look like a dyke.”

“Oh god, when are you from? ‘Look like a dyke,’ what does that even mean? This isn’t The L Word.” Denise rolls her eyes like she practices it in the mirror. She doesn’t move her hand. “But for the record, you _do_ look like one. And do you believe every rumor you hear?”

“Well I’m _not_. Glad to clear that up now. Guys were practically hanging off of you, I wasn’t just blindly believing rumors! It was a reasonable conclusion to draw!” Mac maintains louder than necessary, but the excuse is faulty even to her own ears. “Shane!” she adds as an afterthought.

Mac isn’t surprised. She hasn’t misread a single signal. There’s no reason to be defensive. It’s just stalling the rejection. Feeling the weight of Denise’s soft, manicured hand over her leg is nicer than she thought it’d be, is all.

A shrug is all she gets in return. “I just like knowing they want me. Doesn’t mean I want them. It’s the attention, I told you. It’s the power.” Denise pauses, then calmly follows, “Jenny.”

“ _Jenny_ , oh, you _bitch--”_

Denise points a finger in accusation, quick to bring the evidence  to trial. “You are such a lesbian! This is not a heterosexual conversation!”

Falling silent, Mac works her jaw to keep from launching into threats. There’s not much arguing with that.

“It doesn’t matter, though. I can’t.”

“Can’t?”

She spreads her knees and leans forward so she doesn’t have to see Denise’s face. “I’m gonna die soon, and there’s no way I’m not going to heaven. I’m visiting here because I get a free trial and it seemed badass, but I’m not, like, househunting. End of story.”

Teeth click loudly to her side. “Ah,” Denise says. It’s the first time she’s sounded uncomfortable. “Well that’s an easy fix. God’s not real, so. Whatever, y’know?”

Mac turns back just to shoot her a glare, then she directs it to her clasped hands once more. “I didn’t live my whole damn life all pious and miserable and shit just to fuck it all up now. Even if a beautiful woman who owns gogo boots is hitting on me.”

Thunder in the distance blends oddly with the Chicago track leaking through the club wall in the silence that follows.

“They’re platformers. Gogo boots were the 60s,” Denise says quietly.

“Well, you’re a beautiful woman in wet fucking socks right now, so who gives a shit,” Mac snaps, then straightens up again.

Casting her a sidelong, pitying look, Denise chews through a thought carefully. “This place isn’t real, you know.” She turns over the wording in her head. “God can see all of heaven and earth or whatever, right? But this is a different world. It isn’t either. People made this place, and God doesn’t own it.”

Mac hangs onto her words, and for a moment, almost tricks herself into believing them. “You just want in my pants,” she concludes after careful consideration, deflating.

“Yeah,” Denise admits. “Hey, did I ever get your name? I don’t think I did.”

“Oh. Mac.”

“Mac,” she seems to test how it tastes on her tongue, and Mac prays the verdict falls in her favor. “What’s that short for? Mackensie?”

She huffs out a bit of a laugh. “McDonald. Last name. I wanted a nickname, but the one people went with for my first name’s a goddamn nightmare so I had to intervene and make one up myself like a total loser.”

Denise waits a second, arms crossed. “Well?”

There’s no way she’d ever be so forthcoming with sensitive information to a complete stranger, but the way she raises her eyebrows in expectation is so earnest she can’t resist. “It’s Veronica.”

“What nickname eve--”

“Ronnie.”

 “ _Ronnie!”_ Denise chokes and squeezes Mac’s knee for support when she doubles over. “Oh god, Ronnie _McDonald!_ Oh, Jesus Christ!” She laughs like she just got the wind kicked out of her.

“Okay, come on,” Mac tries, irritated but unable to find it in herself to be angry when there's a beautiful girl clutching onto her thigh. “That’s plenty.”

“Holy shit,” she gasps, straightening at last. Tears now smudge the edges of her complicated mascara. “I just didn’t. Christ! Didn’t expect it.”

“Glad I could amuse you,” Mac says dryly. “Now we never have to talk about it again.”

Denise takes a deep, shuddery breath and leans back. “Oh, we will be talking about it again, rest assured. But I’m done for now. Mac it is.”

Outside their dry rectangle, the rain picks up and wind gusts a thin mist into their hair. Denise’s makeup runs a little more, enough to make the star stenciled on her cheek drip and distort; Mac’s slicked-back bangs loosen.

“Well, Mac. I moved my set an hour early so we’d have plenty of time.” The hand is back on Mac’s leg, now drifting a little higher. When Mac glances up from her own fingers threaded in her lap, Denise is looking right at her, close enough to feel her breath. “You should come home with me.”

“I told you, I’m not--”

“You are.”

“I _can’t_ \--”

“I’m not asking you to!” A cold patch replaces the shape of Denise’s hand when she slips it off to wrap around Mac’s shoulders. “We’ve still got a good hour at least. I’m asking you to come home with me. No euphemism.” She tilts her head, and her loose halo of curls bobs with her. “Well, there is a euphemism, but it’s the 80s one for ‘let’s go smoke crack’.”

“Oh. Yeah, okay.”

“God cool with that?”

Mac considers it. “I don’t see why He wouldn’t be.”

They rise up together, Denise’s arm still looped around Mac’s back, and with a tug from Denise indicating direction, they hurry through the downpour on sure footing.

“This is my sister’s place, technically,” Denise cautions when they arrive at an unassuming walkup a couple blocks away, drenched from head to toe. She has to yell to be heard over the smack of thousands of fat droplets rallying to turn San Junipero into an ocean. “She lived here for awhile on her trial period, but she turned out to be more of a 90s bitch, I guess. What matters is she’s got a ridiculous stash.” The door’s unlocked because there’s no crime in the afterlife, or maybe because Denise’s sister is just a moron. Mac hasn’t been here long enough to know which is more likely.

“Feel free to take off whatever and grab a blanket or something. I feel like my real life body’s gonna get pneumonia, goddamn. Oh, and there’s wine in the fridge.” Denise peels off both socks and throws them to different sides of the room before even turning on the lights. “But first,” she pauses, turning her back to Mac. “Can you unzip me?”

Throat working as she swallows, Mac straightens up from untying her sneakers. “‘Course,” she says unsteadily. The zip starts where the head meets the neck, so Mac’s forced to brush wet strands of hair away to keep it from catching. So close, she can smell her perfume or soap or shampoo or something so strongly it makes her breath stutter. Pinching the tiny zipper between thumb and crooked index finger, Mac drags it downward, exposing inch after inch of damp skin until the dress falls from her frame completely.

“You’re not wearing a bra,” she observes dumbly.

“How many times do I have to tell you how much I value period accuracy,” Denise deadpans, already stepping out of her pooled dress and moving to scoop up a blanket from her sister’s couch. She turns to face Mac again, who stares helplessly. The look on her face is more fear than arousal, but it doesn’t deter Denise. “Your lack of respect for the craft has put some perfectly good sideboob to waste not once, but twice now,” she adds, gesturing to Mac’s bandeau.

Mac has neither the words nor the willpower to do anything but gape. Denise laughs like it’s a game only she knows the rules to, and mercifully wraps up in the blanket at last. “The wine, Mac?”

Jostling like she’s been caught doing something unsavory, Mac returns to herself. “Right, sorry. I’ll get us some glasses.”

It takes a troublingly short amount of time for Denise to locate and assemble everything they need. Part of Mac wonders what the merits of getting high are when you don’t have a physical body to do it with, but the rest just admires Denise’s incredible work ethic. She’s already got it all ready and sorted by the time Mac’s abandoned finding the glasses and resolved to drinking straight from a bottle of red.

“You’ve never done it before, right?” Denise asks from the floor, where she sits criss-cross applesauce to have a better angle for cutting lines. Mac shakes her head. “You. Are. Going. To. Love it,” she says emphatically, tapping her credit card (which she owns just for looks, Mac guesses?) on the table with every word. “I’m more of a crack gal, myself, but newbies would probably be better off snorting, I think.”

She settles in a spot nearby, and offers Denise a swig before taking a long drink herself. Sharing from the same bottle, mooching from the same stash; it  feels an awful lot like communion.

It's about authenticity, she keeps saying, it’s about the spirit of the 80s, but Mac is beginning to think that maybe she just likes crack. Denise rolls something up into a little tube and passes it to her, then lights up a pipe for herself. She pulls it deep in her chest and puffs out once, twice, three times, and Mac imagines they’re smoke signals leading them together. No, she’s in a helicopter and she sees smoke from 25,000 feet up coming from Denise’s bonfire. Another beacon.

“Oh, that’s it,” she moans, body tensing up tight, then seeming to uncoil until she flops backwards on the floor, boneless. Unguarded like this, Denise looks like a completely different person. Mac rolls the tube between her fingers as she thinks, then sets it back on the coffee table. She’s stranded on a desert island, Mac decides, and Mac’s the pilot with the fast-rope and survival skills, and they’re both going to be on the news.  
  
"What, you got the jitters or something?” Denise asks when she loops back in enough to remember her surroundings. “This another Catholic thing? Jesus, you know God can't see you, right? This isn't real, which means no one can judge you. Including the cops. I mean, they can’t arrest you for dreaming of a crime, can they?"  
  
That’s a different point than before. One Mac hasn’t considered.

“No, that’s not it,” she says to the table, bashful. “I just want to remember tonight, is all.”

“You’ll stay, though?” The question’s so quiet, Mac’s unsure if she asked it aloud or only mouthed the words. There’s a weakness to her now that wasn’t there at the club, and Mac wonders if she’s been left like this before.

Laughing in return, Mac raises the wine bottle in a toast. “Like I’m gonna ditch when your sister’s got full bottles goin’ to waste!"

The smile that graces Denise’s features sits like it’s unfamiliar on her face. Eyes darting about, she studies her.

“You look better without the hair gel,” Denise says at last, sitting up far enough to tuck one damp strand of hair back behind Mac’s ear. The rain had left her hair loose and soft, slicked back bangs now framing her face neatly. Denise’s touch lingers against her cheek, more tender than she seems practiced at being. Mac smiles a thank you.  
  
"This isn't really my scene," Mac admits like she's trying to seem torn up about it.  
  
Denise's put-upon face is more forced than usual. She thinks. "The 2000's had a certain rugged integrity to them, didn't they?" she muses, and even though Mac can tell she's trying to guess what she wants to hear, her chest stirs like it's true synchronicity.  
  
"I know just the place," Mac agrees, unrolls the tube, and scavenges for a pen to write down an address on it instead. When she’s satisfied, she presses it into Denise’s palm. "Will you remember? Sunday?"  
  
"Sunday."  


 

* * *

 

 

Sunday brings them to a dingy dive bar in 2006 Philadelphia where the intercom blares nonstop 90s top 20s. Denise gripes about the anachronistic error, but ultimately agrees that it adds to the (Mac says the word in time with her) authenticity.

This time, Denise has abandoned the tacky stage makeup and unnatural costumes in favor of a loose blue flannel, top button undone. Barefaced, her skin looks smooth save for a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her pale eyelashes are still darkened by mascara, but she’s human, if nothing else. It feels more obscene to look at now than when she was sexed up and attempting body rolls for an audience, but that might just speak to Mac’s type.

It’s empty inside save for what looks to be a twelve year old boy who might be the living incarnation of a grass stain, the gangly woman they’re arguing with behind the bar, and a goblin.

The bell rings as they enter, but none of the owners bother looking up to greet the newcomers. Wide-eyed, Mac glances back at Denise expectantly, ready to counter whatever high-collar objection she has in her back pocket.  
  
She’s not even looking in her direction.

“Sweet Dee?” Denise says, already incredulous. The gangly blonde mumbles what sounds like “oh, goddamn” before she and the dirt boy finally acknowledge them.

“What? What is it?” she barks. “Can’t you see I’m in the middle of it with Charlie right now? She thinks certain types of plasticware are sentient, Den I can’t let this go unresolved.”

The grass stain, Charlie, nods hard enough to pinch a nerve. Her hair sticks up in every direction, like she painstakingly cut each strand to the exact same length, or maybe got electrocuted. It bobs emphatically with her wild gestures. “We have at least another hour of this on the docket,” she agrees way too loudly, voice squeaking.

“Dee, you’re dead?” Denise continues as if she hadn’t been interrupted. “Jesus, I thought you were just visiting the 90s.”

“Yeah, well, I was. And then I died, and now I’m here. Living out purgatory with Charlie and Fran. Move past it.”

The goblin, a woman trapped in the middle of a metamorphosis into a perfect sphere, raises her beer and cackles grossly at the mention of her name. Dee rolls her eyes the same way Denise does, and Mac finally catches up.

“Oh, holy shit, dude, this is your sister? She looks way older, though,” Mac says.

“I’m at my goddamn peak, boner. My goddamn peak!” Sweet Dee snaps, though one huge hand flies up to feel the edges of a shallow wrinkle on her face self-consciously. “Sorry, I didn’t realize Denise was planning on pretending to be 28 for all eternity.”

“It’s not eternity, you bitch. You know I’m still just visiting. Oh, you bitch. You wrinkled bag of bones, you goddamn stork-looking bitch,” Denise shoots back, all teeth.

“Denise didn’t live past 28 for real,” Sweet Dee explains as if for Mac and Charlie’s benefit, ignoring Denise’s tantrum. “Pulled a big dramatic stunt fresh out of college, and now she’s gonna be a vegetable till she finally dies.”

“You goddamn bitch!” Denise continues spitting, on a roll.

“Can I get a beer?” Mac asks, finally moving in past the entryway and straddling a stool. The arguing makes her feel at home.

“Get your own goddamn beer, you practically work here,” Dee says, even as she pops the top off a Coors Lite and knocks it into her hand. Denise follows in, still seething, and Dee bares her teeth. “Hey sis, is that nurse still planning on marrying you so she can kill you, or what? What was her name? Bertha?”

“Maureen.” Venom mostly gone, Denise slouches in the stool next to Mac, now fully resigned. She catches sight of Mac’s concerned look, and lets out a sigh. “She’s my doctor. I need consent for them to pull my plug so I can live here for good, but my pillhead mom sure as shit won’t give it. Maureen agreed to do it as long as she can mooch off all my inheritance.”

“Sounds like you got it all figured out,” Mac says, cramping again.

“Except that Maureen’s a crazy bitch,” Charlie supplies helpfully, now coming to sidle close to Mac. They exchange too-hard pats on the back and clink the necks of their beers together. Mac never bothered to ask Charlie how or when she died; it doesn’t much matter if they still see each other just as often as they did in life. Denise watches the familiar exchange unfold with what just might be a hint of jealousy. Mac delights in it.

“Except that Maureen’s a crazy bitch,” Denise agrees, finally accepting a drink from Dee. “She’s like, obsessed with me, and she’s gonna wind up here eventually, and there’s no fucking way I’m dealing with the fallout of our ‘relationship’ for the rest of eternity. No thanks.”

“Maybe you’ll find someone else, then,” Mac supplies, unsure what else to say.

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Hey!” calls Fran from across the bar, finally standing and hurrying towards them with difficulty. She moves her arms as if she’s running, but she moves slower than most people walk. “You hear the bar down the block’s got a microbrew that’s stealing all our customers? It’s probably a stolen formula!”  
  
“Who gives a shit,” Dee says haltingly, not following. “There’s no such thing as profit. That just means they’re working way harder for no reason.”

Mac and Charlie both bang their fists on the table and shout “It’s the principle!” and “You goddamn bitch!” in unison as Denise starts in on some shrieking manifesto on avenging all of their deaths, and just like that, they’re scheming as one perfect, intricately evil unit.

The plotting derails, of course, when they realize the true common passion between them isn’t revenge, but drinking, shouting, and breaking shit.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Mac and Denise leave Paddy’s before 10 that night, pleasantly buzzed and scream-singing along to whatever song was playing through the bar last. Denise says something about keeping the party going, and Mac lets her take the lead once again. They barrel through the door to a modest apartment, and between the ugly decor and cramped living space, she instantly feels at home.

“Over here,” Denise calls out, grabbing Mac’s wrist and tugging before splitting off to collapse spread eagle on the couch.

“What, am I supposed to sit on the floor?” Mac laughs, following with a loose, dopey grin and plopping down on Denise’s shins since she’s intent on taking up as much space as possible. Denise grumbles, but works her feet out from under her ass to drop in her lap instead.

They get comfortable laying together, buzzed and warm in a place so familiar Mac’s sure she lives here already.

“Being here, in San Junipero… It kinda messes with you, doesn’t it?” Mac begins. She waits, fearing Denise might have dozed off, until she hears a hum to confirm she’s listening. “It was like a dream at first, but now that I’ve been here enough times, it feels more real than being awake.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Denise says noncommittally.  

“And then there’s _actual_ dreaming, and that’s a whole other thing,” she continues, unconcerned. “It seems like all I ever dream about anymore is being here. I kind of can’t remember which things actually happened.”

Denise laughs. “Well, if you’re trying to recall whether or not my face turned into spiders and all your teeth rotted out of your head, I’ll let you know now that one was a dream.”

“I’m not Charlie!” Mac objects, playfully shoving at Denise’s feet. “They’re normal dreams. Like, full conversations, bro. Going places, dates, whatever. Sometimes it’s like I’m reliving things that I’ve seen before when I’m visiting this place. Deja vu, y’know?”

“Ooh, maybe they’re prophecies. Maybe God’s speaking to you through dreams. Maybe you’re the next Moses!” Denise waggles her hand in the air, a little too far to catch Mac’s arm with her excited swipe. “Oh shit, if you’re the next Moses, you gotta let me know ahead of time so I can actually start listening to the shit you say. I do not want to get all drowned in a parted river, or whatever.”

“God didn’t talk to Moses in a dream, I’m pretty sure. At least I don’t think so,” Mac says, grabbing Denise’s hand with both of her own and pinning it against the couch. “And that’s probably blasphemous anyway, dude.”

Denise cracks up again. “I thought we were past that!”

Mac can’t help but smile along with her. “Yeah, yeah, we are! I’m just saying, is all! If I were a sleep-prophet, I’m pretty sure I’d be getting way more important premonitions than what new tank top I’m gonna score on the cheap or who I’m gonna go down on.” She freezes, panic seizing her by the throat. Oops. One of those things was supposed to be a secret.

Denise digs her heels into Mac’s lap and uses the vice grip still pinning her hand to the couch to haul herself into a sitting position. "Oh, I see," she starts in conspiratorially, and Mac lets herself go boneless in last defense. "You know, now that I'm thinking about it, I'm pretty sure I've had a couple... different dreams as well." Her smile this time borders on predatory.

“Oh yeah?” She feigns innocence, leaning over the arm of the couch in an attempt to put as much distance between them as possible. “Did you knit yourself a dreamy vag cozy?” She snickers nervously, avoids eye contact.

Parting her lips in a faux-surprised “o”, Denise asks, "Well I was trying to leave something up to imagination or discovery-" she emphasizes the latter with a raise of her brows, "but I suppose I can give you a synopsis." She leans forward even farther now, nearly doubled over with her knees drawn to her chest.  It’s all too smooth and practiced, and Mac’s racked by the miserable fear that she’s getting played by some foreplay formula. Denise's lips are close enough to feel an electric warmth ghosting between them. Mac drops her gaze for a second to look at where Denise’s hand has found her waist. “It starts something like this," she murmurs, breath hot against Mac’s lips.

Years of anticipation and loneliness and craving are finally bubbling to the surface and she can’t convince herself otherwise. Play it off, she tells herself, but there’s no way to school her expression into anything but absolute reverence. Mac drapes her arms around that delicate neck, brushes her fingers past a curl resting on the nape. She flickers attention from Denise’s lips to her eyes, searching, before touching their lips together with the intensity of a lifetime of internalized desire bubbling over. Denise yields to her, heavy-lidded and pliant.

When she feels Denise part her lips, Mac breaks away with a gasp, teary-eyed and ears tinged pink. Her expression is open as ever, but Denise still doesn’t know how to read it.

“What are. Why are you cr--? I’m, I didn’t mean,” she starts without knowing where she’ll end, unraveling.

“Goddammit,” Mac laughs out, and catching her by the bicep to keep her from retreating any further. Another scoot backwards and she’d land on the floor. “Stop freaking out, I’m not _crying_ , Jesus. I’m just…” Mac falters, knowing how much Denise hates talking about emotions. Rather than revolting from it, though, she’s still listening carefully with her brows knit with concern, still like she’s afraid to startle or maybe like she thinks any movement will get her caught.

Mac swallows, recenters. Carefully admits, “It felt exactly as right as I always hoped it would.”

“Oh.” Denise takes a beat to process before she grins again, malicious as ever. “Oh my god, oh, did somebody just have her first kiss? Did somebody just experience intimacy with someone she cared about for the very first time? Did you have your first kiss? Is somebody crying about her very first kiss?” she mocks, twisting her fist by one eye as she pretends to cry.

Mac punches her in the arm, too infatuated to be angry. “Shut the fuck up, dude,” she forces out, more happy tears bubbling over as she joins in the laughter. Denise gives her another peck, then one more, both messy. “And no more teasing, Jesus! This is way too much foreplay, even for lesbians.”

When Denise opens her mouth as if to validate her wooing system, Mac shifts to snake both arms around her waist, and easily lifts her to straddle her lap. Catching Denise’s lower lip between both of hers silences whatever objection was coming.

Historically, Mac’s always leaned more towards an objective strategy when it comes to kissing -- one that involved tasting as little of a man’s mouth as possible. As she loses herself in the soft, smooth warmth of Denise's lips against hers, though, it’s all she can do to remain there, solid.

One of Denise’s hands rests at the base of Mac’s head, toying with her slicked-back hair like she’s trying to loosen the gel. The other slides down her shoulder blade to the smooth muscle of her back until she squeezes at Mac’s defined bicep, appreciative.  

“This tattoo is so fucking dykey,” she murmurs against Mac’s lips, patting the inked eagle lovingly. Mac snorts. "You know, I'm starting to worry this couch might prove to be limiting,” Denise adds seriously, her voice low.

“I think we’re on the same page.” Mac responds with something between a simper and a smile before scooping her up, hands cupped just under her ass with her legs still wrapped around him. She stumbles just slightly (from the alcohol, not her lack of strength), but Denise holds on, kissing her neck as Mac successfully navigates around the coffee table. "Just gimme directions. No need for a sassy tour guide voice, either. The snark can wait for a time when I’m not sporting a water park in my undercarriage."

"Gross. To the right, and I should warn you, you'll see a door," she instructs, her voice breathy. "The door, in ancient times, was originally installed as a means to reach from one room to another, and through which the bed, created for sleeping, consorting, and flicking the bean, is located. To your left, you might recognize the kitchen, a place where meals can be prepared, but mostly serves as an entire room for an appliance to keep your booze cold. If you look quickly, you might even catch a glimpse of the elusive bathroom straight ahead."

Mac noses into her hair, clutching her tighter as she follows the first direction, but there seem to be two bedrooms. "Which door did you say I needed to haul your ass through, O helpful tour guide?"

She hums, mouth moving to her jaw. "Bedroom. Last door. Go." she instructs, shifting her legs slightly. "And hurry, I can feel your hip bones digging into my thighs in the worst possible way. Didn't think a bulky butch like you would be this bony, Mac. Skip leg day a couple times?

"I'm the strongest person in the world and I could crush your head between my thighs, end of discussion,” she defends with a thread of real anger, toting her through the door as quickly as possible before Denise notices how she’s trembling. She lays her down atop her bed as gently as time and desperation permits.

She looks up at her as Mac climbs up to straddle her hips, gaze softening.

Maybe it’s the alcohol. Maybe it’s the fact that in two hours, she’ll be alone again. Maybe it’s the way Denise’s voice warms her down to her toes. But someway, somehow, they wind up with their limbs tangled, kissing soft and sweet and desperate and unrefined.

Mac fumbles back up to her knees, hunched in a low bow, head inclined a breath from Denise’s lap. She clasps her hands, prayerful, and when Denise lifts her by the chin, presses two fingers to her tongue, she takes them like communion. She finds forgiveness in the body and blood.

“You have beautiful lips.” Denise watches her through hooded eyes, reverent.

Mac thinks back to how Denise looked at her from across the club. She thinks about religion. She thinks that maybe the best way to worship is on her knees.

Denise pulls her hand back slowly, dragging a knuckle along Mac’s full lower lip. She catches her by the wrist before she can retreat any further to press a chaste kiss to her fingertips, now slick.

Her lips ghost across Denise’s narrow, delicate fingers. “I’ve never done this before,” Mac states the obvious just to say something. It feels like she never stops stalling.

“I know.” She tugs at the hem of Mac’s sleeveless tee. “Do you want to pop this off?”

“Oh,” Mac says, realizing they’re both still fully dressed. She sits back on her haunches to tug her top up and over her head. She does so methodically, like getting ready for a shower, because if she thinks about the way Denise is watching her like Cinemax, she’s never going to make it.

“No bandeau today,” Denise observes with amusement. She raises both hands to cup around Mac’s chest, appreciative. “Very 2000s of you.”

Mac bats her hands away with a huff. “God, just take your shirt off, too.”

Grinning, Denise guides Mac’s hands to her chest with the unspoken invitation to do it herself. She slides the buttons open one by one, reliving the encounter in Dee’s apartment, but this time, there’s no hot pit of shame threatening to radiate through her whole body. Instead there’s only Denise, and Mac, and a finite number of layers separating them.

Denise arches up to let Mac slip the flannel off of her, and unhooks her bra herself to spare Mac the fumbling, and when her bare back meets bedsheets with a contented sigh once again it’s all Mac can do to contain a whimper.

“I want you so bad.”

Denise runs a hand through Mac’s hair, separates the strands until they fall loose the way she likes. “You already have me,” she whispers, and all Mac can think is _amen_.

Head ducked, she undoes Denise’s jeans with trembling fingers and slides them from her hips. A hand in her hair guides her to mouth against those perfect, perfect thighs, kiss from knee to thigh and savor the warmth against her lips.

“Mac,” Denise pleads, and she reaches one hand down to push her panties aside. “Mac.”

She ghosts her ring and middle finger over the seam between her thighs, feels how Denise’s entire being comes alight at her fingertips. She drags them up to her clit and presses down hard, and Denise coils her legs up and around Mac’s back to retreat within herself. “Yes,” she breathes, raising her hips to meet her every touch.

Mac presses the heel of her palm against her, then cups her sex and lets herself fall chin first until her head rests between Denise’s knees. Parting her with her fingers, she leans in and tastes vindication.

Mac spells S-A-L-V-A-T-I-O-N with the tip of her tongue in the heat, feels Denise tense and writhe against her. “Just like that,” Denise breathes, clutching Mac’s head, then the sheets, then Mac’s hair, then her hands, then the sheets again. Mac sees herself taken apart and pieced back together anew, baptized.

She sucks at her clit and laves her tongue over it as Denise howls praises that bring a burning to the pit of her stomach so much brighter than any guilt. She slips a free hand into her shorts, grinds against the meat of her thumb. Denise trembles like a sweaty, gorgeous wind chime beneath her, chest rising like it’s pulled by a string to heaven as she heaves for breath. Yours is the kingdom, Mac wants to say, and the power, Denise, and the glory, forever. Just as Denise’s hips stutter and she lets out a sharp, pained gasp, Mac unfurls as well, thinking of God (“God! O God!”) and of communion and congregation. She wonders if this was what He envisioned when He said to come together.

Mac crawls up to share Denise’s pillow, the two of them catching their breath together. Denise is the first to recover, which she illustrates by rubbing the back of her hand between Mac’s legs. “Do you want…?” she asks blearily, though something tells Mac she wouldn’t be that willing to repay the favor even if Mac wanted her to.

“You gave me everything I wanted,” Mac answers genuinely, and Denise blinks back tears of her own.

“It’s weird, isn’t it?” Mac fills the silence. If things get too heavy, she’s afraid Denise would sooner skip out than let herself break down, and Mac’s not ready to let this evening end. “Technology got so big and weird so goddamn fast, none of us old people could keep up with it. We’re a couple’a out of touch hag ladies.”

Denise shakes a little from the cold of the room, so Mac slings a leg over her.

“And iPhones and those _eye_ -phones -- god, do you know about those? They’re, like, phones _in_ your eyes, it’s a nightmare -- they’re kids' entire lives. But now,” Mac interrupts herself with a snicker, brain a hazy Etch-a-Sketch of endorphins and listless energy that leaves her giddy, “technology _is_ our lives. Literally, our entire lives are digital.” She tugs Denise closer into a hug and laughs into her curls.

Denise snickers against the curve of her neck, peppers wet kisses above her collarbone. “You make it sound like you’re untangling some huge conspiracy. It’s not a secret.”

Running her fingers down up and down Denise’s bare back, Mac maps out the shape of each vertebra curling into the shape of her spine. “I just think it’s ironic, is all. We’re all ‘kids these days’--” she mimics the guttural timbre she imagines her mom would’ve had if she’d ever strung together a full sentence at a time, and grins into Denise’s hair when it earns her a laugh -- “but, but really, kids should be saying ‘dead people these days!’ Right?”

Denise unburies her face from the crook of Mac’s neck only to roll onto her belly and bury her nose in the pillow. She turns her head just enough for Mac to see her brilliant eyes and the angelic cut of her cheekbones. “We’re not dead people,” she says seriously, though her voice comes across muffled. “Why do you always have to say it like that?”

Mac shifts on the pillow, thinking. “I guess,” she starts on uncertain footing, “because this is the only place I feel alive.”

A long beat passes between them. They each come to a conclusion.

Denise’s voice is only the barest hint of a whisper. “Don’t you want to feel like this all the time?”

Mac watches her carefully, dark eyes searching. She runs her thumb from the bridge of Denise’s nose to the sharp tip. “Yes. I do,” she confesses.

Mac can tell Denise is smiling into the pillow by the crease of her eyes.

“Marry me,” Mac says.

Denise blinks.

“Marry me,” she repeats. “You need a spouse’s consent to pull the plug so your life can start, and you don’t want it to be Maureen. I’ll do it. Won’t it mean more if it’s me? If it’s somebody you’ve talked to? Somebody you’ve been with?”

“It’s,” she starts, falters, doesn’t finish.

“I already have a wedding dress. It’s not really my size and it’s got some blood on it -- I faked my death, it’s a whole thing, don’t worry about it -- but it’ll work just fine. We just met, yeah, but people get married without being in love all the time, and we’re already better off than all of them as it is. There’s nothing standing in our way.”

Denise says nothing, but her eyes go a little glossy again.

“Denise. Let me do this for you.” Smiling, eyes soft, Mac takes both of Denise’s hands in her own. “Do you want to marry me?”

“Yes,” she answers in an awed whisper, like raising her voice would shatter the fragility of the moment. “I do.”

The sheets whisper against their skin as Mac shifts to kiss her, slow and easy. Their lips don’t quite fit together for how they’re both smiling.

Moonbeams sneaking past the thin curtain soften their hard edges as they lay together, picturesque. The tug in Mac’s chest this time speaks to love; the twist in her gut promises a heaven-sanctioned.

“Thank you,” Denise struggles to say. Mac draws her close and imagines that if God can see their little pocket of a false world, that He’s smiling down upon them.

For the first night in either of their lives, someone holds them like they’re sacred.

**Author's Note:**

> I was so honored to be able to write for one of my favorite blogs and authors, the orchestrator of this exchange, Peyton underwooding! Their works (fic and their original book _Write Yrself Clean,_ which I hold close to my heart) have genuinely impacted me as a writer and as a person; it means the world to me to have the opportunity for something I've written to be read by someone I look up to. I hope I did your prompts justice!! Thank you so much for hosting this exchange and for being such an inspiration!
> 
> Thank you as well to tumblr users @szayelgranz, @flannellinedjeans, and @mcpoylehateblog for beta reading.
> 
> P.S. For the record, Mac And Dennis Died Holding Hands.


End file.
